The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- History
There are hoop-skirt manufactories where, in the incessant din of
machinery, girls stand upon weary feet all day long for fifty cents.
There are photograph galleries--you pass them in Broadway admiringly--
where girls 'mount' photographs in dark rooms, which are hot in summer
and cold in winter, for the same money. There are girls who make fans,
who work in feathers, who pick over and assort rags for paper
warehouses, who act as 'strippers' in tobacco shops, who make caps, and
paper boxes, and toys, and almost all imaginable things. There are
milliners' girls, and bindery girls, and printers' girls--press-
feeders, bookfolders, hat-trimmers. It is not to be supposed that all
these places are objectionable; it is not to be supposed that all the
places where sewing-girls work are objectionable; but among each class
there are very many--far _too_ many--where evils of the gravest
character exist, where the poor girls are wronged, the innocents
suffer. There are places where there are not sufficient fires kept, in
cold weather, and where the poor girl, coming in wet and shivering from
the storm, must go immediately to work, wet as she is, and so continue
all day. There are places where the 'silent system' of prisons is
rigidly enforced, where there are severe penalties for whispering to
one's neighbor, and where the windows are closely curtained, so that no
girl can look out upon the street; thus, in advance, inuring the girls
to the hardships of prison discipline, in view of the possibility that
they may some day become criminals! There are places where the employer
treats his girls like slaves, in every sense of the word. Pause a
moment, and reflect on _all_ that signifies. As in the South 'as it
was,' some of these girls are given curses, and even blows, and even
_kicks_; while others are special favorites either of 'the boss,' or of
some of his male subordinates, and dress well, pay four dollars a week
for board, and fare well generally--on a salary of three dollars a
week.
TEMPTATIONS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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